Colette Maloney, PhD Head of Unit, INFSO E5, Cognition European Commission

1. ICT Work Programme 2007-08Challenge 2 Cognition, Interaction, RoboticsNCP meeting19 October 2006,Brussels Colette Maloney, PhD Head of Unit, INFSO E5, Cognition European Commission

2. Cognitive Systems, Interaction, Robotics: motivation software-based systems need to be more… • adaptive - to changing tasks and situations; • robust – against surprise; • effective - improve through anticipating or predicting the future; • natural - in dealing with humans and human-like behaviour. In a nutshell: software-based systems should be able to function effectively in circumstances that were not planned for explicitly when the system was designed … an engineering goal

3. Cognitive Systems, Interaction, Robotics: 2007-08 3 intertwined perspectives • development of engineering principles for intelligent integrated systems – cognitive systems – combining many aspects of human competence, and based on research in several disciplines or sub–disciplines. • design of robots or agents that operate autonomously in teams or in cooperation with humans, for example, in exploration, in emergency situations, in productivity improvement, in control, in delivering assistance. • technologies for human–machine-interaction based on a well-grounded understanding of sensor data and human language, the ability to generate concepts and to translate across languages.

4. Cognitive Systems, Interaction, Robotics: 2007-08 Target outcome 1) Engineering principles for artificial systemsthat: • can achieve general goals in a largely unsupervised way, and persevere under adverse or uncertain conditions; adapt, within reasonable constraints, to changing service and performance requirements, without the need for external re-programming, re-configuring, or re-adjusting. and/or • communicate and co-operate with people or each other, based on a well-grounded understanding of the objects, events and processes in their environment, and their own situation, competences and knowledge.

5. Cognitive Systems, Interaction, Robotics: 2007-08 Focus on one of 3 areas • robots handling different objects and operating autonomously or in cooperation with people • systems (stand-alone or networked) monitoring and controlling material or informational processes • multimodal interfaces and interpersonal communicationsystems understanding language, gestures emphasis is scientific and technological advance -not application development; applications serve to provide research questions and to demonstrate the impact of conceptual or technical innovation.

6. Cognitive Systems, Interaction, Robotics: 2007-08 Challenges • a key issue is how these systems should work – greatly improving robustness etc. requires rethinking the way systems are engineered. Work should: develop and apply engineering approaches,.. and criteria for benchmarking • what we need are theories (systems theories, software architectures, control theories, modelling theories, ... ) that will allow us to build these types of systems. Work should: contribute to theory: … learning in artificial systems, interpretation of data, design and architectures…

7. Cognitive Systems, Interaction, Robotics: 2007-08 Challenges • engineering progress will depend on advancing scientific understanding of what both natural and artificial systems can and cannot do, and how and why. • integration of disciplines: artificial intelligence, computer vision, natural language, robotics,… computational neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology,…philosophy of mind,…mathematics,… Work shouldexplore: • use of advanced components, biomimetics,.. • new/bio-inspired information processing paradigms, models of natural cognition, emergent behaviour,.. • new approaches to language understanding and generation

8. Cognitive Systems, Interaction, Robotics: 2007-08 Target outcomes 2) and 3): • development of a principled methodology for analysing what is needed to achieve our long term goals; development of methods and experimental scenarios for evaluating performance, eg, how to demonstrate generality, how to measure robustness, etc; • creation of a requirements and capability-led understanding of natural systems that can be utilized across multiple engineering and application domains • creation of a common language to discuss natural and artificial systems in terms of performance - bridges to adjacent disciplines (cognitive neuroscience, psychology) • coordination at EU-level • gather momentum and focus efforts of the many and varied relevant research communities in support of this challenge

9. Cognitive Systems, Interaction, Robotics: 2007-08 Proposals should • identify the type(s) of system(s) they want to build and explain why they cannot build it/them now • be highly interdisciplinary • proposals should complement and may also extend current projects – rather than try to be different (see links at end) • be ambitious – beyond incremental progress! • involve only those partners needed to achieve the goals and no more key issue is how these systems should work – rethinking the way systems are engineered

10. Cognitive Systems, Interaction, Robotics: 2007-08 Links More (FP6 project descriptions, presentations, consultations, reports) at • http://www.cognitivesystems.eu • http://cordis.europa.eu/ist/ic/index/htm See also • http://www.eucognition.org • http://www.roboticsplatform.com Contact Points: • Cecile.Huet@ec.europa.eu • Colette.Maloney@ec.europa.eu Challenges 2 & 4 info day in Lux: Jan 24-26, 2007